GOP candidates for 17th debate national issues

DAVID MCKEOWN/SPECIAL PHOTO
The Republican candidates for the 17th Congressional District speak during a debate Wednesday at the Sovereign Majestic Theater, Pottsville, sponsored by The Republican-Herald and the Orwigsburg Free Public Library. They are, from left, Frank Ryan, Josh First, state Sen. David Argall and Allen Griffith.

Josh First, Harrisburg businessman

Argall

POTTSVILLE - Repeal the health care bill.

Read the Constitution.

Build the coal-to-oil plant.

Deport the illegal immigrants.

The Republican candidates for Congress in the 17th District discussed several topics recently during a debate at the Sovereign Majestic Theater.

The 17th District includes Schuylkill, Lebanon and Dauphin counties and parts of Perry and Berks counties. The incumbent, Democrat Tim Holden, is being challenged in the primary by Harrisburg attorney Sheila Dow Ford.

The candidates answered questions that were based on those submitted by readers of The Republican-Herald of Pottsville, a Times-Shamrock newspaper that sponsored the debate along with the Orwigsburg Free Public Library.

Health care reform

"I totally, absolutely, unequivocally oppose what was passed," First said. "There is nothing reforming about it. If anything, it is deforming."

If elected, First said he would vote to repeal it. However, he said there is a need for reform and he would vote for the right kinds of changes. He mentioned how his family suffered inconvenience when its health insurance was terminated without notice as an example of a problem.

Argall said he wishes Congress had spent the time working on economic problems instead of wheeling and dealing, arranging "$100 million for Florida, $100 million for Nebraska, $100 million for Louisiana" in the health-care bill.

"The people of this district did not want that 2,500-page monstrosity to pass - they did it anyway," Argall said.

Griffith said the health care reform bill "is a government takeover of one-sixth of our economy ... The primary problem is this: It simply is unconstitutional."

Moreover, Griffith warned "whatever the government provides, government controls" and that the government will end up "telling you what you can eat and where you can eat."

Ryan said that what the nation needs is tuition assistance for doctors and nurses; a simpler approach to medical billing, which is 6 percent of all medical costs; tort reform, and an emphasis on wellness.

"My biggest objection, most of the people who voted for it never read it, including Congressman Holden," Ryan said.

Unemployment

Argall criticized the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, saying the stimulus money was wasted on things that don't work. He would rather put the money in infrastructure, which has proven to create jobs.

Griffith said the stimulus bill was a waste of almost $1 trillion because "Government never creates jobs. The private sector creates jobs," and he warned of possible tax increases.

He called for the elimination of estate taxes and regulations that destroy small businesses, and said bad trade agreements, particularly with China, have cost the United States 5 million jobs in 10 years.

Ryan said the federal government has created 5,000 more IRS agents, which prompted a small murmur in the audience, and called for more solidarity.

"Labor is not the enemy. Business is not the enemy," he said. "We need to create mortgage-paying jobs in this country. We can't saddle young people" with $14 trillion in debt, high tuition bills, higher electric bills and other expenses.

"Coal was king and I think coal can be king again," First said. He called for the completion of a proposed coal-to-liquid fuels plant in the region, infrastructure, and "fair trade, not free trade."

Welfare restructuring

Griffith suggested welfare money is often wrongly allocated.

He said about 2 million Pennsylvanians receive $15.6 billion in federal aid, which comes out to about $7,500 per recipient, and said residents could buy very good medical insurance with that amount of money.

"It is a terrible miscalculation to say everyone who is on it is abusing it," Ryan said. "That would just not be accurate."

Ryan said people who try to improve themselves often get no assistance and that members of the black community have told him their problem is the education system, which they say has deteriorated and does not prepare people for work.

"Beef up education and reward people who are trying to get out from under the legacy of poverty," he said.

First defended welfare as "the hallmark of a compassionate society and a sign of things falling apart" because it has become an entitlement. He called for work-to-welfare reform, distributing benefits on a needs basis and requiring it be paid back, and said illegal immigration must be curbed because many receive welfare benefits.

Argall took the opportunity to grumble about Gov. Ed Rendell "taking cheap shots" at a cost-cutting commission he is chairing. He said the state auditor general praised the commission's work, which has identified that $200 million in welfare benefits are wrongly paid out in Pennsylvania.

Education

"I don't believe it is the role of the federal government to be involved in education. I believe it is the role of the state government," Ryan said. He said there needs to be more state control and more local control, "take the shackles off the teachers" and greater involvement of business in education.

First said he would close the U.S. Department of Education and increase local control.

Argall said education is primarily the responsibility of the state and that he would only spend federal money on programs that have proved effective.

"Go to the Constitution, read it and see what government is supposed to do," Griffith said. "And see if you can find any place for the Department of Education. You can't."

Alternative energy

"Clean coal is, I think, a potential godsend for this country," First said. "It should be no holds barred in what we pursue for the energy we need."

He said the region could become the "new Texas of America" with the development of clean coal and cellulose ethanol, which is ethanol made from wood pulp. He also said the federal government should set up a "Manhattan Project for alternate energy."

Like First, Argall called for the building of a coal-to-oil plant. He also faulted the federal government for harassing regulations on anthracite deep mining. He said miners have told him federal officials impose rules on anthracite mines that are meant for mines in Wyoming, which is like comparing "a scuba diver and an astronaut."

Griffith also said he hopes the coal-to-oil plant project, "which all of a sudden fell apart," can still happen.

"Energy independence is a national security issue for us, folks," he said. Griffith said the nation has adequate resources but, "We've got to turn the system loose." He said he fears the explosion of a BP oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico last month may be used as an excuse to shut down all offshore drilling.

Ryan said he agrees with Griffith and added that the destruction of America's manufacturing base is also a national security issue. He also faulted federal regulations.

"I do not want someone in Washington, D.C., determining if someone in Pennsylvania can use the Marcellus Shale," Ryan said.

Global warming

"The future of our country has to be determined by documented, peer-reviewed, hard science and not politicians running around saying the sky is falling," Argall said.

He warned that should Congress approve cap-and-trade legislation, which limits the amount of carbon gas a nation may emit but allows it to emit more by paying another country to emit less than its quota, Schuylkill County "will be very severely impacted."

"The recession will become a depression," Argall said.

Griffith said there is no evidence carbon gas causes global warming and cap and trade is a "fraud" that will redistribute American wealth globally.

Ryan agreed, saying global warming theorists started with their conclusions, then went looking for evidence to back it up. Meanwhile, cap and trade will "create parity in the world by bringing us down" and he would rather create it by bringing up poorer nations.

First was the only candidate who thought favorably of cap and trade as a concept because it uses "private, market forces" to control pollution. He said it works well in the U.S. Clean Air Act with nitrogen and sulfur.

However, since the evidence is not convincing that carbon gas is causing global warming, it would be wrong to use it against global warming, First said.

Immigration

Griffith faulted the Bush administration for its amnesty proposals, criticizing Bush for "turning it into a political issue, not a law issue."

He called for securing the border with fences or technological barriers or patrols and deporting the illegal immigrants who are in the country.

"We do not have an obligation to care for them," Griffith said, and called an amnesty bill currently proposed in Congress "disgusting" because it provides free lawyers for illegal immigrants to fight their deportation.

Ryan said he has friends from Honduras and Haiti who had to go through extensive red tape to gain entry to the United States and are "offended" by illegal immigrants.

He also sees another agenda at work.

"Call this what it really is," he said. "This is a way of (changing the balance of) power in the U.S." He said as illegal immigrants are counted in the Census, it will affect the reapportionment of congressional districts, favoring the West Coast.

First said he doesn't believe in amnesty and warned enemies can slip in through the porous borders with dirty bombs or nuclear weapons and "blow up our country."

"America is a frontier nation," he said. "Liberals seem to think we still have this frontier and anyone can just walk in here," something he said "is not sustainable."

Argall called for depriving any employer who knowingly employs an illegal immigrant to lose all government funding it may have.

He also called for English to be the common official language of the nation, adding that he thinks foreign languages are wonderful and has taught his children German at home.

bsmith@republicanherald.com

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